


Betrayal

by LORBEERPRINZ



Category: Star Driver: Kagayaki no Takuto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 10:17:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11803986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LORBEERPRINZ/pseuds/LORBEERPRINZ
Summary: He had everything planned out so well, everything was going smoothly. All of a sudden, however, fate decided to play a cruel prank on him.





	Betrayal

**Author's Note:**

> I first came up with this fic when I was feeling really terrible, hence the thematics. I’m feeling better now, but for some reason or another I wanted to get this out of my system anyway, so here it is. The point is, it's been vaguely implied at some point that bringing Shingo back from his coma via medical ways instead of waiting until he wakes up on his own mght be dangerous, and Head forbade doing that exactly because of this. So I was thinking, what had happened if he hadn't forbidden artificial means of brining Shingo back to consciousness (or if Professor Silver had just not listened to him). In fact, I had this in my head for a while longer than aforementioned bad mood, but that was the point when I really fleshed it out until I wrote it. Anyway, would Head react the way he does in this fic if this had happened in canon? Who knows. Maybe partially. I exaggerated a little for dramatic effect here and there. So there. I'm not sure if "please enjoy" is the right thing to say with a topic like this though haha

Listening to the ocean waves crash against the coast has always been something to bring him solace. Whenever he needed some time away from his duties in Kiraboshi’s lead, Head would come here, maybe bring a canvas and some paint, and enjoy the scenery as well as its sounds. In fact, he had been doing this quite a lot in the passing weeks and months, but being as close to his goals, to the end of everything, as he was now, he felt he could allow himself some regular downtimes, preventing himself from going crazy with both anticipation and planning.  
He didn’t even have to do much by himself anymore. His coming to a place like this had scored him an instant rise on the ladder towards success the moment Sugata had appeared before his eyes. Working with him had be the most important, but also one of the more relaxing steps in his plans. And now he could afford hanging back for a little while more than ever, as the East Maiden was taking care of the last refinements for Sugata’s ascent, and the last piece to his puzzle was said to get to him very soon.

It was all coming together now.

 

Head sat back after a while of painting, taking a deep breath of ocean air. Just moments later, however, he felt the mobile phone in his pocket vibrate.  
Hadn’t he told everyone this number was for emergencies only?  
It turned out the message he had been sent by Professor Silver was just a few words long, but these words managed to make his blood freeze.

_We lost him._

 

He stared at the message for a moment, then returned to his house so fast he couldn’t even remember how, leaving his canvas and paint behind at the shore.  
This message had to be some sort of prank.  
There was no other way.

Arriving in his living room, Head was confronted with a wall of uncomfortable silence. Only few people were around, but they stared at him as he entered the room, nobody daring to say a word. Ryousuke looked back and forth between him and the bed, from which none of the usual sounds came. Even Professor Silver behind his desk had stopped typing around on his computer as Head had entered.

The air seemed empty.  
For weeks he had been listening to those mechanical beeps until they had almost become part of his house. Now they were gone, and it was as if this wasn’t his house anymore.  
It felt so wrong.

Head swallowed, regaining his composure as much as he could, and slowly approached the bed.  
As he did, a nurse quickly rushed off from the bed as quietly as she could, carrying a box that said something about emergency use. He paid her no mind, rising the white sheet that had been put over the patient’s face in dignity.  
He stared into this unchanging face.  
Shingo still looked the same as always, appeared to be sleeping as deeply as had been for the past fifteen years. Nothing had changed.  
This had to be a cruel joke.

“He was in the process of waking up”, Professor Silver started to explain as calmly and analytically as it was usual for him, “but at some point his heart suddenly stopped. Believe me, I tried all in my might to save him.”  
But Head heard barely anything of that.

He searched Shingo’s face for traces of life, anything that would confirm this was all just a cruel joke, or a misunderstanding, a wrong diagnosis.  
Anything that meant he was still alive.  
But there was nothing.

Normally it was possible to see the faint ups and downs of Shingo’s chest, indicating that despite his deep sleep he was able to breathe on his own. But there was nothing of this sort now.  
Getting even closer, Head hoped to find at least a tiny bit of breath within Shingo. The way his expressionless face had not changed between life and death was unnerving. He still looked as pretty as before, not having slipped into the afterlife long enough for his body to change. Maybe he was a little paler. Maybe.  
But no matter how much he waited, no signs of life were coming back.

Ryousuke said something, which Head hardly registered, nor did he really care.

He removed the cloth even further, exposing Shingo’s neck and collarbones. He touched a spot very familiar to him, having dealt with it so many times in the past. Like during that past, Shingo’s lips still appeared to be so soft, just like his skin.  
But unlike those times, no warmth was emanating from that spot anymore. No glow, no sign. No mark.  
His body felt so cold.

“As it is knowledge by now, marks disappear upon a bearer’s death and will only return when someone else further down the bloodline is born with it again. But as we don’t know if he has any relatives at all…”  
Professor Silver sighed, appearing to regret the loss of this one Cybody that now would never get the chance to move within Zero Time, or outside, more than the loss of his patient.

Silence fell over the room again, so heavy it seemed to make it hard to breathe. Head kept staring at Shingo’s face, framed by countless strands of long, dark hair. With every second he kept looking, it appeared as if the man below him became paler and paler.  
Was this just his imagination or really happening? Despite his eventful life, he had never seen a dead person before himself.

And the longer he kept looking, the more it dawned to him that Shingo and everything he had carried was lost forever.  
It was deafening, blinding, suffocating.  
He didn’t want to believe it was really true.

A need to punch Shingo suddenly arose in him, to pick him up and drag him around until he would finally wake up again.  
He didn’t want to believe anything of this was really happening.  
He felt so betrayed.

He grabbed the lifeless man’s face, getting so close he could feel the last instances of natural warmth disappearing from Shingo’s body step by step.  
Everything was falling apart. And it was all Shingo’s fault.  
He had waited years over years for him to wake up, waited so much he had even forgotten how many years it had been, how Shingo’s eyes had looked, how his voice sounded. And now his memory would never be refreshed again.  
Worse yet, the one thing he had waited for so long to receive, the last piece to his puzzle, was lost for all eternity.  
It was all collapsing right in front of him.

“Shingo, you idiot”, he hushed, faintly wishing his friend could still hear him somehow, return somehow. How foolish.  
“You made a promise, didn’t you? How could you dare breaking it?”  
His grip on Shingo’s face tightened.  
“I thought you loved me!”

The silence about the room appeared thicker than ever before, with only the air conditioning daring to hum. As yet again nothing happened, his old lover did not show the slightest reaction and the knot in Head’s throat grew, the current leader of Kiraboshi gave Shingo a last push back into his pillow and finally let go of him.  
He sighed deeply and could feel how the early shock slowly turned into a slew of other emotions.  
How could Shingo do this to him? He had no right.  
After all, Head had cared for him for years on end, paid his gigantic medical bills, had arranged it so that only the best staff available would be allowed to treat him. He had spent ages in the hospital, visiting him, had brought him into his house for even better observation, had slept next to his stupid beeping machines.  
And this was how Shingo repaid him? By slipping away into the embrace of nothingness?  
This was not fair.  
This was betrayal.

Head removed himself from what was now a deathbed, an open coffin for someone he had spent years on to prevent him to let it turn everything out this way.  
He was burning up inside, was suffocating. He thought somebody talked, but who cared. Nobody could say or do anything to make this situation less painful in any way.  
The deafening rumble of a chair falling over suddenly pierced the atmosphere, and as Head looked he realized he had kicked it over himself. He wasn’t even able to follow his own movements anymore right now.  
He hoped all of this was just a bad dream.

Behind him, Ryousuke moved and carefully covered Shingo with his white bedsheet again.  
Still nobody dared to speak up.

Head swallowed deeply, tried to remove the knot from his throat that had formed during this whole ordeal. He took a long breath that should hopefully clear his mind a little.  
Not caring what anyone else in the room did, he left the fallen chair where it was, took some steps towards the windows and had a good look at the scenery before him.  
The setting sun hurt his eyes a little, but whatever.  
This helplessness was a far worse feeling.

Above the house, the cloudless sky began to darken, slowly giving way to the stars.  
It was not like he was unable to reach them now, Head realized. The longer he thought about it, the clearer he found a picture in his mind that showed him victory despite the setback that had happened just now. There were surely other ways to make use of Samekh, which he anticipated Sugata to activate any time soon. He himself might have to resurrect Reshbal for this, but that was nothing impossible. He had more than enough Libido to do this without much harm.  
But despite all that, he felt something gnawing on his back, slowly creeping inside him and spreading rapidly. He wasn’t sure if he had ever felt it this intensively.

He glanced at Shingo again, now nothing more but a heap of white sheets painted orange and grey by the almost vanished sun.

 

He hated this betrayal.


End file.
